Great Power Competition in Syria Continues to Escalate

Analyst weighs in on risks and highlights

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave a fiery speech to supporters of his AKP Party on Sunday, demanding to know why his allies in NATO were not supporting his invasion of the Kurdish-dominated Afrin region in neighboring Syria. "We are constantly harassed by terror groups on our borders," he declared. "Unfortunately until now, there has not been a positive word.”

Meanwhile, rhetoric between Washington and Moscow over recent events in Syria continued to sharpen.

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters on his aircraft as he prepared to land in Oman for talks with that country’s government Sunday evening that Syria’s Russian-backed Assad regime would be “unwise” to continue using weaponized chlorine gas in attacks against its opponents. The Kremlin has accused rebel groups of staging such attacks against its own forces in order to make it look like the regime did it.

"Either Russia is incompetent or in cahoots with Assad. There's an awful lot of reports about chlorine gas use or about symptoms that could be resulting from chlorine gas," Mattis said. "They are Assad's partner and whether the airplane dropping the bomb is a Russian airplane or a Syrian airplane, I'd prefer not to say right now."

Here is a video which gives some analysis of recent events in Syria from a journalist who reported from there